﻿Replication of “Direct Democracy and Government Size: Evidence from Spain” (Carlos Sanz), Political Science Research and Methods, 2018.
  


* Description: I study the effects of direct democracy on economic policy in a novel setting.
In Spain, national law determines that municipalities follow either direct or representative
democracy, depending on their population size. Using a fixed-effect
regression discontinuity design, I find that direct democracy leads to a smaller
government, reducing public spending by around 8%. Revenues decrease by
a similar amount and, therefore, there is no effect on budget deficits. These
findings can be explained by a model in which direct democracy allows voters
to enforce lower special-interest spending. I provide several additional results
and discuss alternative mechanisms.* 
Files included in this package

- ReadMe.txt (this file)
- sanz_psrm.do (Stata do file)
- sanz_psrm.dta (Stata data file)
- sanz_psrm.txt (Stata log file)

* Program: Stata Version 12.0
* Additional programs required:Please install “rdrobust”, "xtivreg2", "ivreg2", and "winsor".
* Process of Replication:

(1) Place the do file (sanz_psrm.do) and data file (sanz_psrm.dta) in the same folder.
	
(2) Run sanz_psrm.do.


* Most Recent Date of Successful Replication: 22 August 2018
* Data Description 

Contains data from sanz_psrm.dta
  obs:        79,495                          
 vars:            40                          22 Aug 2018 23:17
 size:    13,037,180                          
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
id              double %9.0g                  
year            float  %9.0g                  
g_p_turnout     float  %9.0g                  Turnout (t)
unemployment_~e float  %9.0g                  Unemployment Rate
g_p_votes_pp    float  %9.0g                  PP Vote Share (t)
g_p_votes_psoe  float  %9.0g                  PSOE Vote Share (t)
g_p_votes_iu    float  %9.0g                  IU Vote Share (t)
g_p_votes_win~r float  %9.0g                  Votes Winner (t)
population      float  %9.0g                  Population
expenditures_c  float  %9.0g                  Expenditures
revenues_c      float  %9.0g                  Revenues
deficit_c       float  %9.0g                  Deficit
log_expenditu~c float  %9.0g                  Log Expenditures
log_revenues_c  float  %9.0g                  Log Revenues
log_transfers_c float  %9.0g                  Log Transfers
log_capital_c   float  %9.0g                  Log Capital Exp.
sh_young        float  %9.0g                  Young
sh_adult        float  %9.0g                  Middle-Aged
sh_old          float  %9.0g                  Old
age_avg         float  %9.0g                  Mean Age
sh_foreign      float  %9.0g                  Immigrants
sh_eu           float  %9.0g                  EU Immigrants
dd              float  %9.0g       answ       DirDem
g_p_diff        float  %9.0g                  Votes Difference (t)
f_g_p_votes_pp  float  %9.0g                  PP Vote Share (t+1)
f_g_p_votes_p~e float  %9.0g                  PSOE Vote Share (t+1)
f_g_p_votes_iu  float  %9.0g                  IU Vote Share (t+1)
f_g_p_turnout   float  %9.0g                  Turnout (t+1)
l_dd            float  %9.0g                  DirDem (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_pp  float  %9.0g                  PP Vote Share (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_p~e float  %9.0g                  PSOE Vote Share (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_iu  float  %9.0g                  IU Vote Share (t-1)
l_g_p_turnout   float  %9.0g                  Turnout (t-1)
l_g_p_diff      float  %9.0g                  Votes Difference (t-1)
l_g_p_votes_w~r float  %9.0g                  Votes Winner (t-1)
l_log_expendi~c float  %9.0g                  Log Expenditures (t-1)
l_log_revenue~c float  %9.0g                  Log Revenues (t-1)
l_deficit_c     float  %9.0g                  Deficit (t-1)
t               float  %9.0g                  Term
j               float  %9.0g                  Terms in DD
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by:  id  year



